Interviews

Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in various interviews and profiles. This page offers a curated selection of these interviews, providing insight into the projects I’m involved with and the perspectives I’ve shared. While not exhaustive, it offers a good overview of my recent work and interests.

Interviews

Founding Weaviate with Bob van Luijt and Etienne Dilocker - Weaviate Podcast

Co-founders celebrate seven years of building Weaviate, discussing agentic memory recall, taste in AI, and community Q&A.

Choosing Leadership Podcast with Sumit Gupta (Ep. 282)

Leadership Journeys: Discussion on starting early, compounding everything, transitioning from music to technology, and learning to let go of control as a CEO.

Interview Purpose Drive Podcast (Dutch)

Interview with Michel Breeuwer about Weaviate, life, etc…

Weaviate and Box on vector embeddings and the future of intelligent search

Interview with Ben Kus, CTO of Box on the Box podcast

The Venture Playbook Podcast by Sia (Ep. 11)

Interview with Marcin Lukowicz about co-founding Weaviate, building AI-native database architectures, and scaling modern software infrastructure.

Building Deep Tech Podcast

Interview about why to create things

Merantix AI Campus Interview

About many topics of building AI-native infrastructure

Devico Breakfast Bar Podcast

How to use vector databases to unlock AI’s full potential?

Tools for Tech Leaders with Ian Tien

Topic: Lead with Purpose, Not Titles

Beyond Coding Podcast

Interview with Patrick Akil from Xebia about execution, hiring, and taking smart risks.

Bright Founders Talk

Interview with Barry Hayles from Temy on how we are building Weaviate

This Week in Startups!

Interview with Alex Wilhelm about Weaviate, agentic architectures, and more.

Pitch Perfect Podcast

Interview about company culture and our collaboration with Battery Ventures.

Chain of Thought Podcast

Interview about Weaviate and why this is the time to build with AI.

AI Infrastructure & the Evolution of RAG

Interview with Conor Bronsdon of Chain of Thought about the evolution of RAG

Vertex AI RAG Engine with Lewis Liu and Bob van Luijt - Weaviate Podcast

Technical interview with Google Cloud’s Lewis Liu examining the evolution of enterprise RAG architectures and generative AI integration.

How to Sell Your Vision

Interview with Moti Elkaim about Weaviate’s Series-B investment.

Leading with Data Podcast

Interview on the Leading with Data Podcast about how vector databases are a new wave of infrastructure.

Snowpal Podcast

Conversation with Krish Palaniappan, it’s a wonderful 101 on vector databases, agentic architectures, and more.

Interview with Surf (Dutch)

Interview in Dutch about selling software through developers.

Conversation on Can I Get That Software in Blue Podcast

Conversation with Chad Tindel about many topics including studying music, becoming a founder, and more.

Interview on the AI Business Asia Podcast

Conversation with Leo Jiang about many in-depth topics around Weaviate.

Longform interview on 7DTV (Dutch)

Longform interview in Dutch with Ronnie Overgoor. We discuss company building, AI, my background, and many other topics.

AI.nl Interview on Data Quality

Interview in Dutch discussing how autonomous AI agents improve data quality and transformation in enterprise databases.

Building a multi-million dollar AI business and the future of AI

An engaging discussion between Raja Iqbal, of Data Science and me.

Soup Talks: Beyond the Algorithm

Conversation with Joris van Heukelom on “The Jazz of Entrepreneurship,” comparing composing for a jazz band to leading an AI startup, the necessity of human taste, and why mastering hard things makes them fun.

Profile in Dutch Financial Times (Dutch)

Profile by Jasper Houtman about my background, upbringing, music, company building, and Weaviate.

Now is the Time to Build – Run Galileo / Chain of Thought

Season premiere interview with Conor Bronsdon on the Galileo channel discussing generative feedback loops, AI-native database architectures, and developer experience.

The Story of Weaviate on Frontlines.io

Deep dive into the story of Weaviate, early language model experiments, relationship-first fundraising, and the single pitch deck philosophy.

Category Visionaries Podcast

Interview about how we created a new category in software infrastructure with Weaviate.

Longform interview on the Accelerometer podcast

Longform interview with Dr. Matthew Mirman about the origins of his company Weaviate, Future of Vector Databases in AI, company building, and more.

Vector databases and the $8 trillion open source market

In-depth interview with Matt Turck for Data-Driven New York about AI and vector databases, particularly Weaviate.

The Analytics Show (Ep. E137)

Disrupting Giants: Building Open-Source Platforms & Communities — Discussion on competing with legacy incumbents, open-source ecosystem growth, and data strategy.

In-depth interview on building an open-source startup

This is a podcast with Emily Omier in which we discuss the why, what, and how of building an open-source company.

SURF Feature on Jazz, ArtEZ/Berklee, and Open Source

Profile by Edwin Ammerlaan detailing your studies at ArtEZ and Berklee College of Music, your early discovery of word embeddings, and how creative community building translates to open-source software leadership.

aiGrunn Podcast (EP 4)

Conversation on the vector database revolution, semantic search, and the direction of AI infrastructure in the regional and global ecosystem.

Longform interview and profile with James Le

A super-detailed deep dive interview and a profile by James Le.

BI-Platform Interview at Big Data Expo

Interview in Utrecht regarding vector database fundamentals, the rise of Generative AI, and a comparison of European and US AI market developments.

Interview about Weaviate with NASDAQ’s MarketSite

General introduction to Weaviate and vector databases

In-depth interview with Brian Schechter celebrating the hacker mindset

In this interview, we dive into what being a maker and hacker means, and the revolution of generative AI.

Revolutionizing AI Search with Weaviate

Interview for the Microsoft blog with John Maeda digging into Weaviate’s history.

Building an AI-Native Company

Long form interview with Contrary Research about how I see the development of Artificial Intelligence infrastructure companies.

HyperDB & Local Vector Databases – Weaviate Podcast #46

Joint interview alongside co-founder Etienne Dilocker and HyperDB founder John Dagdelen covering local vector databases for LLM agents, scientific literature mining, and structured information extraction.

Vector Databases with Software Huddle

Technical discussion with Sean on why specialized vector databases are required over adding vector capabilities as a feature in conventional databases.

How to Build an AI-First Database Startup (kapa.ai Podcast #2)

Interview on the kapa.ai podcast discussing the founding story of Weaviate, AI-first database evolution, and crossing the chasm with developer adoption.

Index Ventures Leads $50 Million Investment in AI Startup Weaviate

Interview with Kate Clark about Weaviate’s Series-B, emphasizing how I think about company valuations.

MT/Sprout Interview on Jazz, Art, and Software

In-depth interview in MT/Sprout detailing your background as a jazz bassist at ArtEZ and Berklee College of Music, financing musical projects in the US through early software ventures, and how artistic abstraction connects to open-source software engineering.

Interview with Ben Lorica about vector databases

An in-depth interview with Ben Lorica of The Data Exchange where we dive into the orgins of the vector database.

Data Exchange Podcast Ep. 153 (Video Broadcast)

Video interview with Ben Lorica (Gradient Flow) comparing vector search engines to file systems, hybrid search implementation, and data management user experience.

Vector Search, the AI Stack and more with Bob van Luijt

In-depth interview with Sam Ramji for the open-source data podcast.

Weaviate Series-A interview for TechCrunch

This is an interview by TechCrunch’s Cristina Hall about Weaviate’s Series-A. Note that the company back then was still called SeMI-Technologies, and our product was Weaviate.

Digital technology through the lens of language (TEDx)

Although technically not an interview or profile, this is my TEDx talk, which illuminates my thinking about the relation of language to software and how I believe it enabled us to build anything we can articulate.

Interview with Alex Wilhelm introducing the concept of vector search

This is one of the earlier interviews by Alex Wilhelm for TechCrunch, in which I introduce the concept of vector search and vector databases. Note that the company back then was still called SeMI-Technologies, and our product was Weaviate.

Interview on Value Creation in the Digital Age

Interview with Marcel Kwakernaak for the University of Amsterdam about digital value creation.

Knowledge graphs with Weaviate, an interview with Mark Mirchandani from Google Cloud

This is an interview about knowledge graphs and Weaviate​. ​I​t was recorded before the whole AI​ boom and discusses how Weaviate helps ​identify nodes in knowledge graphs using embeddings. Note how the company is still called SeMI Technologies.

Bob van Luijt & Cuong Vu Interview on VPRO Vrije Geluiden

Televised interview and live jazz performance on Dutch public television (VPRO Vrije Geluiden, Season 7) discussing your music project Mark It Zero / Petit Bourdon alongside trumpeter Cuong Vu and drummer Yonga Sun.